Duquesne set to put loss in regular-season finale in past, focus on Atlantic 10 Tournament

One-by-one, they stepped to the free-throw line. Clang! … Swish! … Swish! … Clang! … For every miss by a Duquesne basketball player, there was a chance for everyone to run the floor. A make, of course, bought some extra time.

Two days removed from their worst loss of the season — an 87-60 decision at Fordham on Saturday in the final regular-season game — the Dukes hope to regain some swagger in time to make a run in this week’s Atlantic 10 Tournament.

“That’s probably about as hard as we’ve gone in six weeks, as far as length (of practice time),” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said.

Monday’s marathon final preparation at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse before departing for New York, where the sixth-seeded Dukes had scheduled one more practice before opening the tournament Wednesday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, served as therapy of sorts for one of the surprise teams in the A-10.

Duquesne (20-11) opens play at 7:30 p.m. against No. 11 La Salle, which defeated No. 14 Rhode Island, 73-56, on Tuesday.

“Everybody is 0-0 coming into the week, and it’s one-and-done,” said forward Austin Rotroff, the longest-tenured current Duquesne player.

Duquesne was picked to finish last in the preseason among 15 teams but showed a measure of resilience after closing out last season on a 17-game losing streak.

“We have kind of proved people wrong a little bit,” said Rotroff, who is in his fifth year at Duquesne, but because of injuries and covid-19 restrictions is getting his first opportunity to participate in an A-10 Tournament. “We felt like we could’ve won a handful more of games that could have gone either way.

“Those still leave a sour taste in our mouths, and we want to show that we’re one of the top-tier teams in this league this year and that maybe our record doesn’t show because we lost a couple that maybe we shouldn’t have.”

Meanwhile, junior guard Dae Dae Grant, the Miami (Ohio) transfer and Duquesne’s leading scorer (15.2 ppg), on Tuesday was named to the all-A-10 second team. Junior guard Jimmy Clark III earned a spot on the all-defensive team, the first Dukes player to do so since former Chartiers Valley star T.J. McConnell in 2012.

Clark, a first-year transfer from Northwest Florida College, established himself as one of the most disruptive forces in the A-10 with a league-high 72 steals, which rank tied for eighth in Division I. Clark’s 2.32 steals per game rank 14th in the nation and second to A-10 Defensive Player of Year Ace Baldwin (2.46) of VCU.

Before that 27-point blowout loss to Fordham, costing Duquesne a double-bye in the tournament, the Dukes’ average margin of loss this season was 9.8 points. Only a 25-point margin to then-No. 4 Kentucky in the second game of the season rivaled it.

“We need to turn the page, leave it go and not really carry it with us,” Rotroff said. “We need to focus on a new season.”

Dambrot hoped the process was underway when the Dukes returned to the practice floor this week.

“We’ve been on such a rapid-fire schedule. We didn’t do anything (Sunday) but lift weights,” Dambrot said. “We shot for six minutes, so we went pretty hard (Monday). No real adjustments. Obviously, you’ve got to win each game as you go.”

With the A-10 having tweaked its bracket schedule this season, offering a day off Friday to recover after the quarterfinals, Dambrot said he’s not placing any emphasis on his team’s latest hiccup.

“The double-bye seemed like a big deal, but it turned out that it’s pretty similar to what we’ve gotten the other way, too,” he said. “I don’t know how it would’ve all panned out. We could’ve been the fourth or third seed. You could say that (No. 5) George Mason if fifth, but they’re not much different than La Salle or (No. 8) Davidson. There are probably at least seven teams that could win the tournament.”

After regular-season champion and top-seeded VCU, at 15-3 in the A-10, just two games separated the second through seventh seeds in the league’s final standings.

The winner of Duquesne’s opener will face No. 3 Fordham in the quarterfinals.